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6 Things That Drive Us Nuts When Using Apps

Opinion

There are so many apps ready for download today and competition is fierce, so giving the best possible user experience is more important than ever.

We wrote an article a few weeks ago about the 6 best user onboarding experiences that we had seen, and we wanted to continue this with some poor mobile experiences we see from time to time. Here are 6 common mobile app issues that are guaranteed to annoy your visitors and bring frustration.

1. Poor keyboard context

There is nothing more annoying that entering your email and not having the correct keyboard with the @ sign or .com option. It adds friction to the signup or sign-in process and puts users off.

2. Losing the email address when logging in

This happens on websites quite often too, where the login form resets your email address when an incorrect password is entered. Again, very frustrating and can make a user question why they are signing up or just give up.

3. Hiding an in-app purchase and ads to the last minute

It is quite frustrating to have an app that offers good features but hides that most are in app purchases until you have downloaded and signed up. If you are offering a free and paid version of an app, be upfront and make sure you let the user know what they are getting.

4. Lack of desktop and website syncing with notifications

Say for example that you have 6 notifications on Facebook, you will have 6 notifications on your website account and app. But, what Facebook do well is sync between the two so if you mark your notifications are read on the website, it updates the app in real-time. This makes life so much easier for the user, and mean they do not need to make notifications as read twice. I find that the LinkedIn app for iPhone really struggles to do this and often I have different notification counts on the app than on the website.

5. Lengthy onboarding experience

In our 6 best user onboarding experiences article, we reviewed some of the best experiences we had found. But some apps take this too far and have over 10 screens of onboarding. It can be useful to give a tutorial but often this makes the first experience slow and can distance the user from the app. A good user onboarding experience is something short, sweet and informative that takes little time and gives the user all the details they need to give permissions and start using the app.

6. Disjoin between website and app

Some apps email users for engagement, to remind them of notifications and updates. These emails usually link to the website but some apps like Yelp take advantage of the smartphone and offer the option to open the app with the same content. This gives a fantastic mobile experience. Not so good are sites like LinkedIn who link to the website, load the mobile version and just load a landing page suggesting you download the app, even if you have the app installed. Come on guys!

So these are our 6 biggest friction points when using apps. Did we miss one? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter. Thanks to UX Inspector for some ideas.

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